Economic Revitalization
Tracking downtown revitalization
Since the onset of COVID-19, DSA has been tracking the impact on our local economy. As downtown bounces back, we continue to follow dozens of metrics to trace the path to full economic recovery. A few of these metrics are below.
Downtown Revitalization Dashboard
March 2025 (February data)
Downtown Seattle was the first American urban center to experience the impacts of COVID-19, enduring a sudden economic downturn. As downtown continues to evolve, DSA will publish a monthly Revitalization Dashboard examining key metrics. The data sets provide a comparison point to the same time period in 2019. Additionally, the dashboard will feature notable stories that provide context regarding downtown’s renewal and reemergence.
Please credit the Downtown Seattle Association Revitalization Dashboard for use of charts, data and images on this page.
Total monthly visitors since 2019
More than 1.9 million unique visitors came downtown in February 2025. This represents 86% of the visitors seen in February 2020. On an even more positive note, the number of local visitors downtown (people who live within 10 miles of downtown) was 100% of the level seen in February 2020.
Average weekday worker foot traffic
In February, downtown averaged nearly 94,000 daily workers — the second-highest daily average since March 2020. This figure represents 63% of February 2020’s average daily worker foot traffic — a 7% increase from February 2024.
Monthly hotel rooms sold compared to 2019
There were more than 260,000 downtown hotel rooms sold in February 2025. This figure represents 85% of the demand in February 2020, and a 2% increase compared to February 2024.
In February, the number of occupied apartment units downtown continued growing, rising to nearly 60,000. This represents a 4% increase compared to Q1 2024 and a 26% increase compared to Q1 2019.
Of Note in Downtown
Worker foot traffic in the South Lake Union and Denny Regrade neighborhoods continues to climb. In February 2025, the worker foot traffic was 79% of the level seen in February 2020, and the highest daily average for these neighborhoods since March 2020.
The Historic Waterfront Association is reporting record attendance along Seattle’s central waterfront with nearly 7.5 million visitors in 2024. That volume represents a 13% increase over 2023 and is the highest level recorded since tracking began in 2011.
An estimated 90,000 people came downtown for Emerald City Comic Con on Saturday, March 8. Convention attendees helped boost the total daily visitor downtown foot traffic that day to 299,407 — the highest day so far this year.
Coming Up in Downtown
Hoops hysteria takes hold in downtown Seattle with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament tipping off in Climate Pledge Arena. The first- and second-round action runs from March 21–23. More than 18,000 people are expected to attend the games, and Visit Seattle estimates an economic impact of $13.6 million.
Legendary artist Ai Weiwei’s largest-ever U.S. exhibition opens at the Seattle Art Museum this month. Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei explores more than 130 works and will be showing at SAM through Sept. 7. For the first time in SAM’s history, the work of one artist will be shown at all three of the museum’s properties.
The crack of the bat and the smell of garlic fries return to T-Mobile Park this month. The Seattle Mariners welcome the Oakland A’s to open the 2025 season with a 7:10 p.m. first pitch on Thursday, March 27. After four games against the Athletics, the Mariners host the Detroit Tigers.
COVID-19 Downtown Recovery Weekly Snapshot
These charts show weekly statistics from March 2020 through the most recent week available. To indicate the level of recovery, data is displayed as a percent of the same metric for the comparable week of 2019.
Notes on Sources
Downtown foot traffic data are provided by Placer.ai and are based on cell phone location data. Each person is counted once per day. International visitors are not included. Subsets of this data in the charts are as follows:
- Office worker presence is estimated based on visits by workers who were present between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays in the downtown neighborhoods with the heaviest concentration of office space.*
- Total visitors includes those who do not live or work downtown. It does not include international visitors.
- Hotel data are based on monthly reports from STR, provided by Visit Seattle.
- Apartment occupancy data are from CoStar. This is reported quarterly but the current quarter data are updated in real-time as new information is added to the database.
- Domestic visitors counts those who do not live or work downtown.
- Total foot traffic includes all visits to downtown by domestic visitors, residents and workers.
- Pike Place Market visitors includes domestic visitors who do not live or work at the Pike Place Market.
*Note that workers who have not visited their work site in the past 90 days are classified as “visitors” until they are regularly visiting their work site at least three times in a one-week period.